Infosec
The Heartbleed password-leaking vulnerability in OpenSSL has almost been eradicated from the web just weeks after its discovery, according to an encryption expert.
Ivan Ristic, director of engineering at cloud security firm Qualys, estimates that 25 per cent of websites worldwide were vulnerable to the data-disclosing bug on 8 …

The latest data from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has found that there is still a sizable percentage of Americans who really don't get this internet thing, with 15 per cent never going online and another 9 per cent only doing so at work.
US internet use data from Pew 47 million people still without …

The trailer for GTA V has finally arrived, confirming rumours that the game will be set in a modern-day Los Angeles-like setting.
Developer Rockstar last week teased us with a holding page that said the trailer was due today. Here's the video in all its glory:
Ahead of the reveal, there has been speculation that Rockstar …

CoTW
A close runner-up – but still no cigar – was commentard Pat Att, who, on the news that Google was funding the printing of millions of copies of Charlie Hebdo, came out and said:
Well done Google fund
And well done The Register for showing the Charlie Hebdo covers.
#JeSuisCharlie
No further comment needed on that one.
Driving …

Analysis
The massive 300Gbit-a-second DDoS attack against anti-spam non-profit Spamhaus this week didn't actually break the internet's backbone, contrary to many early reports.
The largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault in history began on 18 March, and initially hit the Spamhaus website and CloudFlare, the networking biz …

The Apple, Google, Mozilla and Opera-backed WebGL project took a significant step forward yesterday, after the Khronos group pushed out a public draft specification of the WebKit-derived code.
Publication of the rough-round-the-edges specification means more web developers can now tinker with, and enhance, the code. Of course …

As he fights for his political life in a speech at the Labour Party conference in Manchester today, Gordon Brown will hope a sprinkle of magical internet pixie dust can help save him.
According to newspapers briefed on the speech, Brown will announce yet again that the government will put cash towards ensuring all school …

Google has announced a new open source project designed to facilitate the use of WebGL, the browser-based 3D graphics standard floated by Mozilla and the Khronos Group.
Known as the Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine - ANGLE, for short - the project will allow the still-gestating WebGL to work in tandem with Microsoft's DirectX …

Review
I suppose this is one of those glass half-empty, half-full situations. For months, the interweb was aflutter with rumours of a new MacBook Air with a high-definition Retina display to match that of the MacBook Pro.
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (early 2014) Apple's MacBook Air 2014-style: use the price cut to get more RAM
However …

Microsoft says it doesn't know anything about the government's plan to deliver home broadband to every child in the country, despite claims from the schools minister that he is putting pressure on it to drop prices.
Contacted by the Reg following Jim Knight's interview in the Guardian's political pages on Friday, a Microsoft …

Apple is designing its own, entirely proprietary screw-head in a bid to prevent punters and repair shops getting inside its future iDevices.
At least, it is if - and it's a very big 'if' - you take a piccy posted on the interweb at face value.
Captioned "a friend took a photo a while ago at that fruit company, they are …

Researcher Lance James has been busy devising ways to play tricks on some of the world's bigger websites using an exotic attack known as CSRF, or cross site request forgery. While his exploits amount to little more than pranks, they point to the very sobering realization that the net isn't a very secure place.
One proof-of- …

Previously confined to smartphone apps, the photo-furtling social network Instagram is now shifting to the web with all users automatically getting web profiles in the next week.
Instagram announced web profiles today and surprise surprise the format of the new web profiles looks a lot like profiles do Facebook, suggesting the …

Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am has revealed the "i.am+" case for iPhones, which launches next month for those with more money than music taste.
The i.am+ will come in two iPhone 4/4S flavours at first, with the basic "C.4 contemporary" model, setting punters back £199. This features interchangeable lenses for standard, fish- …

If you submerged a phone in two metres of water for any serious period of time, you'd never expect to see it work again, right? So imagine the surprise when one iPhone owner recovered his handset from a lake six months after it fell in - only to find it still works.
iPhone owners are well known for dropping their blowers in the …

The inventor of the domain name system has blamed technical and political wrangling for delays in improving internet infrastructure security.
Dr Paul Mockapetris, chairman of DNS firm Nominum, explained that the use of digital signatures would help fix fundamental vulnerabilities in the internet's domain name system, highlighted …

Brits are rather keen on internet-connected tellies, with more than half of households owning a TV that has already been hooked up to the interweb, a survey carried out by pollster YouGov has discovered.
But this apparent interest in buying seems out of joint with the reality of high street sales.
YouGov regularly questions …

More bad news for TV makers and smart-telly fans: only a third of Brits planning to buy a smart TV are doing so to make use of its internet connectivity.
It gets worse: only half (53 per cent) of smart-telly owners know what the 'smart' but is actually for.
Still, some who don't have manager to connect their smart sets to the …

Kensington extended its range of security devices to tablets and smartphones this week, with a collection of protective kit for iPhones and iPads.
Kensington BungeeAir Power
First up is the BungeeAir Power, essentially a plastic iPhone 4 case that connects wirelessly to a key fob. Leave the room without your handset and the …

Prime Minister David Cameron will today gaily announce that Brit adults will be forced to ask their ISP for permission to view web grumble flicks.
The system will also ensure people typing in "abhorrent search terms" for stuff online will receive a "warning" along with some helpline numbers - although a former child protection …

Nokia revealed its first Windows Mobile handset this week, giving a select crowd a glimpse of the Mango phone in action.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop made the presentation to the audience who were asked to put away cameras in anticipation of being shown something hugely confidential. Rules are made to be broken, though, and a minority …

The schools minister, Jim Knight, has decided that every child in the country absolutely must have broadband at home, and has called on technology vendors to help him make it happen.
More than one million UK children don't have access to a computer at home, according to government figures. Now it seems that the ministers intend …

Alienware joined the mini PC biz this week, revealing a powerful games machine roughly the same size as an Xbox.
The Alienware X51 desktop squeezes high-performance components into a compact chassis, the Dell subsidiary said, in a bid to be the brains of a your home entertainment hub.
Alienware X51
As such, the X51 veers away …

Ubisoft has revealed that in order to play its forthcoming title Driver: San Francisco on a PC, users will require a permanent internet connection.
The news was Tweeted by a Ubisoft community developer, who in response to a Driver related query, simply stated "PC version requires permanent Internet connection."
This is …

Sony has released a firmware update for its Bravia televisions that adds Skype functionality as well as the ability to use smartphones and notebooks as remote control devices.
The update means Bravia owners can now recreate their own This Island Earth-style Interocitor, although I doubt there's any Sony TVs shaped like a martini …

With so many flooding the interweb on a daily basis, it can be rather difficult to assess the legitimacy of Apple rumours. But you can always trust a bookie, right?
Paddy Power has started taking wagers on what the subject of Apple's upcoming announcement in New York will be. With fingers pointing towards an 'education event' …

Samsung has posted a teaser shot for its upcoming 8.9in Galaxy Tab, which for some reason interweb pundits believe proves the tablet will be a skinny affair.
All you can really tell from the shot is that the gadget will have an earphones socket and a textured back.
You can make anything look thin if you photograph it from the …

Toyota and Intel are to co-operate on the development of next-generation in-car systems.
The two firms' announcement was short on details, long on generalisation: they will "target appropriate methods of providing information to drivers through in-vehicle systems, as well as information technologies that would enable seamless …

Microsoft has let slip its E3 lineup ahead of this afternoon's keynote, with the topic of Halo 4 high on the agenda, apparently.
"The news millions of Halo fans have waited for: Halo 4 is on the way. But that’s not all…" read the Xbox.com E3 page earlier this afternoon.
Unfortunately, the leak was taken down soon after it was …

B-Sides
HTML5 will allow web designers to pull off tricks that were previously only possible with Adobe Flash or convoluted JavaScript. But the technology, already widely supported by web browsers, creates plenty of opportunities for causing mischief.
During a presentation at the B-Sides Conference in London on Wednesday, Robert McArdle …

The European Commission is set to launch an investigation into broadband performance in a bid to bring greater transparency to the true speed and reliability of interweb services.
The EC is looking for 10,000 volunteers, each of whom will all be sent a special router that will monitor the performance of their broadband when the …

FPS fans will no doubt be shooting off in excitement today after news broke that Valve is readying a new Counter-Strike game.
Speculation has been rife across t'interweb boards, after witnesses came forth claiming to have spent the day at the Valve HQ, having cast their eyes on the developer's next title - Counter Strike: Global …

DRM checks on Ubisoft Games appear to have changed - gamers can now play titles like Assassins Creed 2 without a constant internet connection.
The DRM system, launched with Settlers 7 in March last year, required players to be netted-up the entire time in order to play. The changes mean these games no longer require a permanent …

Several readers emailed us this morning claiming that Elton John today suggested that the iPad 2 will be on sale in April.
The Grammy Award-winning star's comments came on BBC One's breakfast show this morning. Unfortunately, we can't confirm his words: the programme isn't available in BBC iPlayer, and no one's uploaded the …

Identity-hoarder Google has killed various social products that failed to capture the interweb's hive brain in the way it clearly thinks Google+ has done.
As part of Larry Page's drive to make the Chocolate Factory's products appear more uniform across the vast Google estate, the company confirmed it was culling a host of webby …

If you're off to buy a Nintendo 3DS today but don't know where the cheapest place to get one from is, here's a quick run through of the best deals.
It appears supermarket chains are ahead of the pack with pricing, with Tesco offering the lowest - £175 - but only if you buy a game with it.
Morrisons has the handheld priced at £ …

Ridley Scott is to return to his vision of a futuristic Los Angeles by directing a follow-up to the 1982 SF classic Blade Runner.
Rumours of a sequel have graced t'interweb for some time now, but the camera is most definitely set to roll with Scott in the director seat, after Alcon Entertainment - the studio which secured the …

A Kentucky woman cuffed for public intoxication added a third degree assault charge to her rap sheet after allegedly squirting breast milk into a sheriff's deputy's face.
Toni Tramel's mugshot Toni Tramel, 31, of Owensboro, was changing into a prison uniform when she took her chance to let the female officer have it with one …

Intel is going to announce "a new technology" tomorrow, and the online buzz reckons it will release 'Light Peak', its alternative to USB.
Certainly CNet thinks so, citing the usual "unnamed source familiar with the event", who says Intel will indeed put the spotlight on Light Peak tomorrow.
And the interweb has been buzzing …

First look
Reg Hardware Mobile Week
Sony's Xperia S flagship smartphone was on show at the company's MWC 2012 event in London yesterday and, having had a play with it this NFC-equipped Android, I'm impressed.
Prototype models of others in the new Xperia NXT range, the U and P, were also on show.
Sony Xperia S
The build itself is …

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) marks its 40th anniversary on Saturday (April 16).
The venerable network protocol was first proposed by Abhay Bhushan of MIT in April 1971 as a means to transfer large files between disparate systems that made up ARPANet, the celebrated forerunner to the modern interweb.
The protocol required a …

The central pool of IPv4 addresses officially ran dry on Tuesday after the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last remaining blocks of address space.
APNIC, which provides internet addressing services to the Asia Pacific region, received two /8s (33 million addresses) on Tuesday in a move that triggered the …

The Ruby on Rails creator has released version 3.0 of the open source web framework, following a two-year project involving more than 1,600 contributors to the code.
David Heinemeier announced the third generation release of the software – which has been designed to work with Ruby 1.8.7, Ruby 1.9.2, and JRuby 1.5.2+ – on Sunday …

QuotW
This was the week when 70,000 stalkers/just friendly guys were left without a a way to cyber-search out the ladies.
iOS app Girls Around Me, which used Foursquare and Facebook APIs to spot females in the immediate area, was booted off amid cries of "Stalker!"
But the app maker, I Free, insisted it was an innocent socialising …

A new version of Safari tackling numerous security bugs was published on Wednesday, just two days after a major operating system update from Apple.
Both the Mac OS X and Windows versions of Safari need updating to version 4.0.4 1. The latest version of Apple's browser software tackles various remote code execution, system …

Mozilla Labs has huddled together a new group of wonks to research and develop tools for the “open web”.
Dubbed Developer Tools Lab, Mozilla hopes the assemblage of developers – to be led by fresh signings to the cause Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith – will big up open standards and make the interweb a better place for ordinary …

Actress Brittany Murphy's sudden death, just like Michael Jackson's untimely demise before her, has quickly been exploited by scareware scammers.
A spike in searches on Murphy's death has been taken as a theme for Black Hat SEO attacks, designed to push sites that have been hacked to redirect surfers to scareware portals into …

CyberSpy Software, which markets the controversial RemoteSpy commercial keylogging application, has agreed to rewrite the software and clean up its business practices to settle a case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission.
RemoteSpy was marketed as a “100 per cent undetectable” app that might be used to “Spy on Anyone. From …

If you read stories on the interweb, almost all of them sourced from a DigiTimes article, that tablet sales will be whammed next year by Ultrabooks, consider.
The claim is primarily made by Acer VP Scott Lin who, not at all coincidentally, announced Acer's Aspire S3 Ultrabook in Taiwan the day before the Digitimes article …